


all the ghosts are out / see them dance around

by hollowedrxbcage



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, a lot of THOSE being the harrowing & the lynching imagery & everything abt that scene, also: warning for the harrowing in general, but i'm not going into that and instead i'm making this fanfic bc i'm weak and gay, listen i have a lot of feelings abt this show, so so gay, warning for this. like. Not Making Sense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 00:09:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16544996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollowedrxbcage/pseuds/hollowedrxbcage
Summary: The Dark Lord’s yoke encircles your neck, and you dip your head for it. This is faith, you say. This is faith. You want to be devoured, here. You will never be afraid again.Prudence Night is afraid, maybe.





	all the ghosts are out / see them dance around

**Author's Note:**

> title from [x](https://open.spotify.com/track/7mhOHmAYBf6DV8hdk0RvXI), but the alternate title for this was "prudence night, queen of the feast, you mean queen of MY HEART" bc i'm a _gay_

Agatha’s throat opens in honeysuckle red, the blade bright-sharp in the shadows and against her pale skin. You tilt your mouth into something untouchable, something calamitous; think, _I will not be crossed_. You think, _I am the one who rules, here_.

  
  


 

Your mother, says Father Blackwood, drowned herself.

You imagine it: the dusked twist of a river bend, the white lace (of course white; it is about a wedding; it is about a bride) dragging wet against dark skin, the sharp of a body cut through water. You imagine it: the High Priest, your pseudo-father made birth-father, as betrayer. The way he would cut his voice into _No_ , and call it something less than abandonment; the way your mother would say, _I am ruined. You have ruined me_.

You refuse to be anything but ruinous, here. You cannot be ruined, you refuse it.

And your father, then, says Father Blackwood, is himself.

Your breath is harsh. You breath is unforgiven.

Your dress is made of twining gold and eggshell white trailing down. There is a throne of skulls in wait for you, and a coven made ravenous for your flesh.

The honor has leached from your wrists, from the fingernails drawing sanguine away from your palms, but you want that throne - you have been aching to break your ribs apart for this coven’s hunger, this coven’s mouths, and this is how your return is given. You think of the feast of your body, cleaved apart, the sweet of it between teeth. The careless hands piecing the tender of you apart.

Perhaps you are ruined, after all.

  
  


 

When the Dark Lord chooses you as queen, you think, simply, _Good_ , and something indefinable twists through your lungs. You will never be lacking again, you will never be afraid again.

(It does not become what is planned. You breathe in, and you do not break.)

  
  


 

A girl says something, holds your throat in unseen rope, and you do not listen. You want to breathe, you think.

  
  


 

The thing about the Harrowing, you are told, is that there were thirteen witches and there were thirteen nooses wrapped around soft throats and there was air begging against thirteen mouths and there was thirteen bodies held limp from thirteen curving branches. They died, for the crime of being everything that you are.

The thing about the Harrowing, you are told, is that it is about fear.

You hang from a tree, and you think, _I will not be powerless again_.

And in years, a girl with steady hands holds an unseen rope against you.

Small, fragile ghost bodies half-solidify and their wolf eyes look like victory when you choke. This is what the Greendale Thirteen were given, you know, and you strangle for air. You think - helpless, sudden - _Oh_. Maybe you are never not powerless, you are never not fearful, unless you are pretending. You cannot breathe, now (and you should’ve pretended better, perhaps).

The thing about the Harrowing, you are told, is that it is about fear.

  
  


 

Here: Sabrina bathes you in silken buttermilk and floating rose petals, the candlelight a soft sort of melting on skin. She asks about queenhood, about faith.

How to explain: this is transubstantiation; you will be buried as being within every witch that holds you in their body; this is that you are being made into something holy. You will let yourself be consumed, and you will be glad for it - how does one explain that?

You curl temple-dark fingers around the ivory of the bathtub, look in her eyes. This is about trust, maybe.

And - “How sad for you,” your voice almost soft for the knife of it, “to not have faith in anything.”

  
  


 

Betrayal is a blade, is a murder, held to the soft of Agatha’s throat.

There is gravedirt on her tongue and vegetables choked earth-stained from her mouth. Her eyes are a dull accusation, senseless, and you said, _actions have consequences_ \- here it is, the consequence. Listen, every action has its opposite; every action has its reciprocal.

  
  


 

Agatha spills dark against bedsheets. You clutch fear between your hands, say, “My _sister_.”

  
  


 

The Feast of Feasts: the Dark Lord’s yoke encircles your neck, and you dip your head for it. This is faith, you say. This is faith. You want to be devoured, here. You will never be afraid again.

  
  


 

When you were small, clumsy in your skin and wet with riverwater, two girls had taken your hands and said _sister_.

Father Blackwood had prodded your head up with fingertips hooked under your chin, had said, _you will never be weak again_. You had looked him in the unreadable green of his eyes, fingers buried between your new sisters’, and not answered.

Father Blackwood had said, “Your mother is dead, do you know that? Do you understand?”

You had been tremoring, palm sliced currant-red from a stone jagged in the riverbed, and you had nodded. You had been voiceless. Water had still been sluicing down your skin, and the chill shook through your flesh.

“Do you want to be dead, Prudence?” There was a cane, black-wooded and polished, stood steady in his hands.

You were trembling. Your mother was dead. You had said, hushed, stumbling for the right answer, “No,” and the curve of his mouth is always a wolf’s.

  
  


 

The Dark Lord says, _power_. Father Blackwood says, _take it_.

  
  


 

The ghost of your mother splays fingers against windows and says nothing at all.

  
  


 

Two centuries ago, thirteen witches were lifted by their throats on this tree.

This is about a story: It was two centuries ago. We tossed thirteen witches to be torn apart, flesh rended apart, flesh in muzzle-mouths - no. Tell it like it was. We ran, we ran, we fled, and we left thirteen witches behind. We were afraid, can you not forgive us? Will these sacrifices not forgive us?

We watched the air pleading, begging, saying _please_ against their mouths. We watched them strangle. Thirteen of our own, and we watched them die on this hanging tree.

This is about a story: The Harrowing is about repentance. It is about apologies.

Or, no - The Harrowing is about fear. The Harrowing is what you could’ve been, once upon a time; it is a reminder.

No, no, it is -

The Harrowing is a tradition of schoolchildren holding their classmates up, wicked things between their ribs and cruelty in their mouths. The Harrowing is the Dark Lord saying, _Listen, you can live and die and the snap between them is oh-so-quick. You do not matter to me_. The Harrowing is nothing near kind.

Listen, two centuries ago, thirteen witches choked to death on this tree.

The Harrowing is about power.

  
  


 

Agatha is dead for thirteen minutes. You say, nearly, _Fear me_ , and you watch the filth crumpled into her hair, the quick breaths she takes. You say, nearly, _Do not disobey me; Do not give me cause to be fearful; Do not do this again._  
  


 

 

You are terrified, do they realize?

  
  


 

The Harrowing calls your name, taunts you.

  
  


 

Here is the thing: you, Prudence Night, you are powerless.

You are afraid. You are so, so afraid, even if you are a liar.

There is a chain, heavy and metallic, wrapped around your airways, and you are calling it _faith_. You let yourself be devoured for it. You’ll be devoured for it. None of this is anything kind.

Father Blackwood took your hands and promised you something; the devil took your hands in his and he took everything else and his promise became a slaughter. Here’s the thing: this is about power, and you are yoked to a post, and you cannot move from it. The Dark Lord laughs.

Perhaps you are ruined, already.

  
  


 

Hold your breath.

  
  


 

The girl lets you down, and you remember how to pretend, again. This is how the story goes.

**Author's Note:**

> hey sorry for subjecting you to this mess! find me here on tumblr [here](http://thermonous.tumblr.com/) and feel free to yell abt how terrible this is @ me,


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